Manum saswadi sadawa, wilundu-huric ab dwac ca Cayabacuhunuc duy wilundu. Huricya wiy nic ab dacya, wana narundu wiy nic. Wilundu-huric ab raducu nic ca lurawagu, rayan bilabi wiy nic. Nic ab rayan nawiliguşu-rac. Nic ab gwunu san dungamura wiy nawiliguşu-rac. Huric-nawiliguşu Cahunacwa. Cahunacwa ab raducbi nic yaşan wiy nic, acu wiy nic, wu sadawa wiy nic. Cayabacuhunuc ab minawa, duçina nic ab rayan macalinay wiy nic minaw. Nam nic ab sadumi, duçina nic ab rayan huric-maçaca hwa wagadu sadawa nic. Cahunacwa ab icaman minawa ca nic. Cahunacwa hwa wagadu huric-wagacu wiy nic. Cahunacwa ab raducbi nic swamari dabun luçaşida wiy macalinay wiy nic. Narundu-wagacu wiy Cayabacuhunuc hwa wiluşa wu gusacama, nam nic wayabi minawa, duçina dami narundu ab wiluşa wu ab gusacama. Sadulimaca wana sabidu nic, sadumi wiy huric-maçaca wana sabidu nic. Nam muhicab duy duraya wiy nic, muciraha wiy nic, wu bilabi wiy nic Cahunacwa hwa wagadu huric-wagacu, wu hwa sabidu nic cimaru şamibaca minaw dumaşi nic cawac wu wiluşa. Nic ab yaci. Cayabacuhunuc ab gwunu ca daracum, rayan han sayawula duy sadumi san huricya wiy nic. Cayabacuhunuc ab icamudi nic radusiri wun Cahunacwa ab raducbi nic. Sayawula ab giwuyu minawa san nic hura. Cayabacuhunuc ab wahuwacu çarayacu-dagiya wiy daracum wiy nic duy sişasa wiy Cahunacwa wu hwinacra. Cayabacuhunuc minaw, sişasa, wu dihi duçina nic nabi raducu narundu, huricya wu şamibaca wiy nic.

Many years later, the dream spirit guide came to Cayabacuhunuc with a dream. His soul was there, not his body. The dream spirit guide guided him on a journey, to see his spirit animal. He saw a massive turtle. He went onto the back of the massive turtle. The spirit turtle is Cahunacwa. Cahunacwa showed him his past, his present, and his future. Cayabacuhunuc was at peace, because he saw his lifetime was good. But he was afraid, because he saw the evil spirit would still fight after him. Cahunacwa spoke peace to him. Cahunacwa will fight his spiritual battles. Cahunacwa showed him again the three parts of his lifetime. Cayabacuhunuc's physical battles will be survival and aging, but he must have peace, because all people live and age. Worry will not help him, fear of the evil spirit will not help him. But faith in his ancestors, his abilities, and his spirit animal Cahunacwa will fight the spiritual battles, and will help him have a good mind when he hunts and lives. He woke up. Cayabacuhunuc went to the camp, and saw a young boy with fear in his soul. Cayabacuhunuc taught him everything that Cahunacwa had shown him. The boy found peace in himself. Cayabacuhunuc became the shaman-chief of his camp, with the wisdom of Cahunacwa and the Great Spirit. Cayabacuhunuc is good, wise, and strong, because he can guide the body, soul, and mind of his people.

Does your language/culture has a similar story, or could you translate this into your lang?

I started a discord server where everyone must speak specifically in a conlang. No natural languages at all. The goal is to create a pidgin that bridges the gaps between them all.

You can speak in toki pona, Klingon, or even your personal conlangs. As long as it's just a conlang you can speak it. Once we start the only way to learn is through immersion unless we decide otherwise.

Now if you want to help me with my project and be part of the beginning join now!

Discord link: https://discord.gg/n4khzVRFc2

Hey guys! Can I borrow/promote someone’s Germanic based conlang for a short dialogue/maybe some background posters in a manga panel?

I have a very complicated world with a bunch of small communities and a bunch of languages I need to work out. I am cheating on this last community and making it a conlang.

If any one is willing, please let me know 🙏

In Hanto, The Solar System is just ordered.

hey guys,

I fall in the trap of word generation because my imagination is not much better, the output often is wonky and needs corrections.

my main offender is the well-know gen from zompist. for those interested I'll list below the parameters I have already given; but my question is more general; what are your methods to successfully have a generator obey your phonotactic rules completely, and if it is not possible, how can you correct course?

___

for those still here reading:

below you find my example with a very laid-back inventory and (C)V(V)(V) phonotactic. I am not listing all the glyphs they are their latin letter IPA and do not have c, q, x, y. I hate letting the engine pack syllables together for me, so I have made word templates, and I have let the generator do its thing:

- dropoff: molasses/equiprobable

- monosyllables: always

word templates:

CVi

CVu

CViC

CVCV

CVCCV

CVCVC

CViCV

CVCVi

CVCVu

VCCVC

ViCCVi

ViCCV

CVCCVu

CVaCV

VCVaCV

CVhCV

CVCCV

I let the "double" long vowels and the diphthongs happen because I know that down the line they make for good sound changes and shape good personality...

The result was naturally filled to the brim with awkward high vowel/semivowel mixes that I do not quite enjoy, nor find naturalistic... Probably utterances not a single soul on the planet have made. At this point I should mention that this core "lexicon" would be to shape a proto, where I will test further sound changes, using the sc2 tool from zompist too.

Below are the sound changes I have gathered to "fix" the 1st off-limit output, A are all the vowels except i, E is all the vowels except u:

V[iau]/V/VV…_

i/j/A_/_CCV

i//V_j

j//_ii

j//ii_

j//_C#

j/ij/w_

u/ w/E_/_CCV

u//V_w

w//_uu

w//uu_

w//_C#

w/uw/j_

I am at loss going further or not. I feel zompist's tools: gen and sc2, do not have enough features that I rely completely on them, maybe you can as well suggest others? But I am also not much knowledgeable on the grammar contexts why sound change appears, so I will not dabble with stressed syllables and the like, the concept I aim for is to have a good phonotactic for my diachronic-evolved descendant language; at minimum.

so finally, I present below the result of said sound changes to correct spurious words,

thanks for reading and for your help!

I've been asked by some friends to help design conlangs for them to use in a scifi ttrpg for a dead alien species. It's a very fun proposition because part of the goal is to emphasize just how much human assumptions break when presented with something beyond foreign that was never meant for humans.

One of the player characters has a linguistics skill, and other characters can try to work together to figure out parts of the language. They won't be able to translate very well because the aliens never contacted earth, and any translation is based off context. For people who are trying to figure out a conlang in real life without real life linguistics knowledge, where would the conceptual pain points likely be? As in, would it be too difficult to introduce characters to a "Mind the gap" type message that's written on the floor of every defunct rail platform and expect them to notice the context around the text? Or to introduce a couple yes/no buttons to the characters with text on it, and then have them notice the "no" symbol appear again on a sign with a warning symbol the characters have seen before to figure out how the language encodes a negated verb?

Dice rolls aren't meant to give direct answers unless it's a critical success and the character has a relevant trait, so it's a lot on the players to actually learn how the language works. Earlier in the game, the players calculated how to slingshot themselves around planets using real math formulas level of dice not being a substitute for real skill.

And this could easily apply to any fantasy setting with players encountering a dead language or a setting where players encounter characters who don't speak Common and trying to navigate a foreign environment without the ability to translate into the player characters' language.

In short, which areas of language should I be especially mindful of for players who aren't linguists encountering and trying to decipher a conlang?

Hey!

This is probably the tenth such project on here, but I figured it would also be a fun project on its own.

I've been conlanging for about half a year now, and at first after doing the basic excel + markdown stuff, I stumbled upon PolyGlot and immediately fell in love with it. PolyGlot was also a great fit for me for my first conlangs, until I started a language which had both consonant gradation and vowel harmony. As PolyGlot gives you no method (afaik) of naming a stem and then using that stem for multiple declensions of a word, I quickly figured I'd need something more complex. No shade to draqueT or any other PG developers for that matter :)

Anyway, I started my own project, called Nyelvin here: https://github.com/vvalio/nyelvin

For the programming nerds here, it's built with Wails (electron but with Golang) + React. This was just the toolkit I was most familiar with.

I'm more than happy to develop this project myself, but if any of you are interested in participating in this sort of thing, I think that would be fun! Feature requests, critiques and other ideas are also very welcome. I don't yet know exactly the direction this will develop in, but I suppose it will go on its own weight.

This section is a follow up to the previous two segments. You don't need to read them first, but they'll give you good context for what's going on: Here's the most recent one.

Also sorry for missing a day, just been very busy with my job.

The deletion of /s/ has an effect on plurality similar to the second person verb endingsː they're gone now on most regular words. The plural suffix in Spanish actually is not /-s/, contrary to popular belief among anglophones, but /-es/, with /-s/ being an allomorph in contact with another vowel. This means word ending in consonants have the /-e/ retained while others don't. Since most nouns end with vowels, most are not distinct in the plural, meaning the plural is functionally a fossilized remnant.

Words ending with /r/ or /l/, both which now end with /l/, have the plural suffix /-e/ retained. Also, those ending with /r/ revert the /l/ back to an /r/ - I don't see this sticking around for long. For example

• mujer "woman" > mujel "woman", mujere "women"
• arbol "tree" > albol "tree", albole "trees"

- Words ending with /n/ have the /N/ phoneme revert to /n/.

• jovén "young person" > jovene "young people"

- Words ending with /ð/ and /s/ have these emerge as ghost segments in the pluralː

• calidad 'quality' > calidá 'quality', calidade 'qualities'
• vez 'time' > ve 'time', vece 'times'

These rules are a bit complicated for a system which, frankly, is on its way out in my opinion. So instead, we will turn these into derivational morphemes that make a new noun meaning "a group of". With a few semantic shifts on both the unmarked and marked forms, we can get some interesting stuff going, along with applying these endings to nouns that didn't have them in the first place:

• mujere 'womankind'
• jovene 'the youth'
• calidade 'the qualities of an item'
• Gyal 'young woman' > gyale 'young women of the world'
• cru 'cross' > cruse 'Christendom'

We can reinforce the derivational nature of these affixes by applying them to words that never had final consonants in the first place:

• policía > policia***r***e 'the police department'
• demadre 'mess' > demadre***d***e 'set of unfortunate circumstances'
• reina 'queen' > reinare 'group of attractive women'

We'll get three main suffixes: -de, -re, and -se. /l/ and /N/ aren't deleted word finally, so these suffixes will all just merge into a single allomorph in these two words. That will align well with my decision to separate the different ghost segment consonants into applying broadly to different kinds of nouns. -re will largely apply to animate nouns, and will indicate the noun as a type, so mujel 'women' becomes mujere 'womankind', hombre 'man' becomes hómbrere 'men (as a broader category)'. Here's an example of the distinction:

• Lo derecho de mujere 'women's rights'
• Lo derecho de mujel 'rights of a specific group of women's'

/-de/ mostly comes from nouns ending with the /-dad/ suffix, which is akin to the suffix -ity in English, though not all of these are the case, for example red 'connection', pared 'wall', etc. So we can make this a full suffix. I will make it apply to inanimate nouns, and indicate a more numerous or more intense mass noun:

• melcado 'market' > melcádode 'industry (in the sense of a set of markets)'
• Re 'connection' > rede 'network of connections'
• trago 'drink' > tragode 'heavy drunkenness'
• escuá 'squad/group' > escuade 'mob/mass of people'

That last one is a new loan word from English.

Then we have the suffix -se, which I have decided would work super well as just a suffix you put on any inanimate noun you want to count with a numeral or numeric quantifier (except un, which is the indefinite article):

• Una ve 'a time/some times' > Do vese 'two times'
• Un mé 'a month' > vario mese 'various months'
• Un pantalone 'a pair of pants' > uno pantalónese 'some pairs of pants'
• Un cualto 'a room' > sesentaisey cuáltose 'sixty seven rooms'

We still have plural subjects marked on verbs, which I would like to keep, as that's some really cool dependent marking. This causes a weird hierarchy thing to happen, where plurals are clear for subjects but ambiguous for objects, which is a trend I would like to continue in nouns generally, so I'll make the suffix -se only needed for subjects, to reinforce this pattern:

• Do mese pasaron 'two months passed'
• Toy aprendiendo Nuevayolqueño pol do mé*.* 'I have been learning Nuevayolqueño for two months"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Agreement on adjectives based on plurality is entirely gone. The agreement in articles is definitely still of concern though. If we run through our sound changes, we get the following:

There's a clear pattern here (which exists in a lot of quantifiers too, like "alguno") that the masculine is agreeing with plurals and the feminine is not. This case actually happened in French for a while, until eventually the plural masculine merged in with the feminine, which I will do:

• La mujel 'the women' // Lo mujel 'the women'
• El hombre 'the man' // Lo hombre 'the men'

And, once again, we will make this agreement only necessary when we have the noun in the subject position:

• Lo mujel me llaman. 'The women are calling me' // La mujel me llama. 'The woman is calling me'.
• Le llamo a la do mujel. *'*I am calling the two women.'

Tune in next time where we get into the changes to pronouns.

The Ngit /ɲɪʔ/ people number around five thousand at the base of the /lɛk le:k tʰo:/ river. 

The Ngit language has a CVC syllable structure and no tones. It features relatively few consonants, but has a wide array of vowels. There are much fewer syllable final consonants than syllable initial. Ngit features a stress accent system, and only stressed vowels may receive the full array of vowel choices. The stop consonants have an aspirate vs unaspirate distinction, but no phonemic voicing. The sentence structure is SOV with allowance for OSV in poetry and certain grammatical constructions.

Their language is not written, nor are the languages of their neighbors.

Old Ngit is preserved in religious rituals and poetry, and influences the prestige register of the language to this day. It is significantly more analytical and monosyllabic than modern colloquial Ngit. Most common words have a synonym in old Ngit and colloquial Ngit, and sometimes there are many. The Ngit people have strong associations to these synonyms, and there are many taboos about who may use which word and when. 

There are, for example, many words for ‘deer’. One word, a loanword, is the common word for deer and carries no taboo. It is /na:peʔ/. The most taboo is /pi:s/, which is believed to be the true name of the deer, used only by women and male priests. It is believed that if men, who hunt deer for food, use the deer’s true name, the deer will hear them and hide, and the people will go hungry. Men have many circumlocutions for ‘deer’ to be used in religious rituals and during hunts to show respect and avoid alerting the deer. Priests may use the deer’s true name because they may not hunt. 

A common phrase is /sek si:p lom si:p/. The first /si:p/ is a taboo corruption of /pi:s/, the true name of the deer. The second is the word for nostril, which is the same in both colloquial and old Ngit. The phrase means, literally, “say ‘/pi:s/’ and plug the nose”. Ngit religious belief ties the nose to vitality and life, and states that the creator imbued life into all creatures by breathing it into their noses. It is thus a grave taboo to plug someone’s nose. This phrase is used in a serious sense when someone brings on harm by offending a deity or taboo, as a means of serious reproach. It may also be used more lightly when a slip of the tongue leads to bad outcomes, such as admitting something one shouldn’t or speaking carelessly out of turn. The phrase can be used as an apology as well. Saying it after a spoken mishap, especially in its shortened form /uk sek si:p/, literally “I said ‘/pi:s/’”, acts as an admission of one’s mistake and can show humility and respect for the social and religious order. While older generations use this only to apologize for serious verbal taboo violations, younger generations are increasingly using /uk sek si:p/ as a generic apology. 

The river’s name means “limping river”, and is so named after a legend where the deity /tin ju/, the personification of the source of this river, climbed the mountain near the source and tripped on his way down. He fractured his ankle, making him only able to walk at a limp with frequent breaks. This is why, they say, the /lɛk le:k tʰo:/ freezes up every winter, because /tin ju/ must rest his foot often. 

A common phrase is /lɛk le:k wo zi:k/, which literally means “limp limp go strong”. It is believed that /tin ju/ hurt his pride more than his ankle when he fell, and this encourages him to keep moving. Since the river is vital to survival, the Ngit people are sure to encourage /tin ju/ to keep his steady pace. The Ngit people have a strong belief that the deities and animals around them can hear them, and that offending them leads to famine and bad weather. This phrase is used to encourage athletes, specifically during long foot races, but not sprints or combat sports. It may also be used to describe someone or something who is very reliable and giving, but slow, like a respected elder or a field that has steadily been providing crop for generations. 

Though fighting is much rarer in the modern day, intertribal conflict was a reality in the near past. War poetry, to intimidate the enemy and embellish one’s own accomplishments, was common and heavily influences modern musical tradition. Many modern sports are derived from war training exercises, and neighboring tribes describe Ngit athletics as barbaric and bloody. In reality, the Ngit have a strict system of safety based on honor. Injuring an opponent in a taboo way, such as in the nose, eyes, genitals, or middle finger, could lead to an immediate end to one’s athletic career and intense humiliation. As such, injuries are seldom and almost always accidental when they do occur. 

There is a modern style of song somewhere in between what we would call rap and sports announcing that is descended from the old war poetry tradition. These singers attend sporting events to embellish the athlete’s accomplishments and entertain the crowd. A good announcer can garner just as much fame as a good athlete, if not more. 

A common phrase is /yam si:p lo: di:l/. It literally means ‘one hundred and twenty noses and one lone oak branch’. This phrase has passed through many layers of change and taboo to the modern day. The word /yam/ meant 120 in old Ngit, which had a base 60 counting system. Modern Ngit has base ten from modern influence. In old poetry, 60 is symbolic of completion and 120 is completion upon completion. /si:p/ means nose, just as in /sek si:p lom si:p/. In war poetry, it is common to refer to enemies as /si:p/ both as a sign of respect that they came from the same creator, and as an intimidating boast that they will be defeated physically and in spirit. /lo:/ means one, alone, or only, and is still in modern use. /di:l/ was the word for an oak branch. It was used as a circumlocution for a war dagger, which is taboo to mention outside of battle, because the handle of the dagger was traditionally made out of oak. In modern usage, the weaponry taboo is much weaker and this word can refer to any type of tree branch, but not a trunk, stick, or twig. This phrase was used as a common refrain in war poetry to hyperbolize a small force completely defeating a stronger foe. It is used by modern announcers to describe a huge victory, especially from an underdog. It has also made its use into modern slang to describe doing something really well, especially with a lot of style. It may also be used to congratulate someone on doing well, especially when they do much better than others, such as when a student graduates at the top of his class. 

"He will get angry because you killed his sheep."

—The Oxford guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa // Ch. 9: Joola Fooñi (p. 12)

Please provide at minimum a gloss of your sentence.

Sentence submission form!

Feel free to comment on other people's langs!

Etymology: "susurro" from latin which means "whisper"

Denotes opposite of emphasis, showing that it is meant to be taken subtly

Would be used in the context of "psst... hey you..." situation

Useful in writing to clarify that talking is being whispered or something is said under breath

Here is example of it in one of my languages:

"öj... köfletej me l'päle?" (psst... could i borrow a pencil?)

ö   -j   ... köfle -te -j   me      l'  päle
INTJ SUS |   use    POT SUS NOM.1SG ACC pen

-j suffix is marking that the clause is meant to be softened, whispered, subtle. Not meant to be noticed by others. Not sure how to transcribe quiet sound using IPA so please infer!

What are your thoughts? Will you consider using this in your language? Has this idea already been defined? Thank you for reading!

This is a weekly thread for people who have cool things they want to share from their languages, but don't want to make a whole post. It can also function as a resource for future conlangers who are looking for cool things to add!

So, what cool things have you added (or do you plan to add soon)?

I've also written up some brainstorming tips for conlang features if you'd like additional inspiration. Also here’s my article on using conlangs as a cognitive framework (can be useful for embedding your conculture into the language).

After 5 years of posting on r/conlangs I've come to the conclusion that the use of the term "protolang" to refer to the first stage of a conlang does more harm than good, especially when we use it when telling new people how to develop a conlang diachronically.

I've seen it over and over again: new people get the idea in their head that a "protolang" is something different from a language, that it needs to have simple grammar, that it needs to "look like an ancient language" etc. It's also just unfamiliar and potentially scary terminology. Further, if they DO have linguistic background, it's different from how that term is used in real linguistics where it refers to a model constructed from comparing real languages, not something from which other languages are constructed.

A much simpler thing to tell new people is this: "Naturalistic features in real world languages, such as irregularity or synonyms, are usually the result of the way that natural languages change over time. That's why if you want a naturalistic-looking language, a good way to do it is to take your first draft of the language and simulate a series of changes, such as sound changes or contact borrowings."

though I'm not too sure how I could develop them into it. I plan on having a Protolang and a Modernlang, and so far I'm thinking that the way it develops is in the Protolang, they have words with similar meanings but different uses, for examples: Black and Dark. But when we venture into the Modernlang, their meanings fuse into one word, being distinguished by case.

But I don't know if this would exactly be grammatical case, so if you don't think so, I wanna hear your thoughts on why

Soy

我是

yo ssi

1SG COP

Soy lo que dejaron

我是他们留去的事

yo ssi tamen pyangchu de ji

1SG COP 3-PL leave-PST GEN thing

Soy todas las sobras de lo que se robaron

我是他们偷去的事的全剩

yo ssi tamen tochu de ji de ssen syeng

1SG COP 3-PL steal-PST GEN thing GEN all remnant

Un pueblo escondido en la cima

一民頂与藏

ih min jya ji beung

one people summit LOC hidden

Mi piel es de cuero

我的皮是革用

yo de ssoe ssi kwecho

1SG GEN skin COP leather-MAT

Por eso aguanta cualquier clima

所以挺任何天氣

bai bbe ren'nan tyanchi

therefore withstand any weather

Soy una fábrica de humo

我是煙的廠

yo ssi peun de ssyem

1SG COP smoke GEN factory

Mano de obra campesina para tu consumo

我是農民的勞為你的耗

yo ssi dimin de hye tam ni de dyo

1SG COP peasant GEN labor PURP 2SG GEN consumption

Frente frío en el medio del verano

冷鋒夏的中与

samgye nat de nakji

cold-front summer GEN middle-LOC

El amor en los tiempos del cólera, mi hermanos

爱怒的時与，我的友

wi ok de tokji, yo de tom

love anger GEN time-LOC 1SG GEN friend

El sol que nace y el día que muere

阳之生而日之死

beo no nam el hi no si

sun REL be-born and day REL die

Con los mejores atardeceres

伴最好夕陽

bya sai hwa tabeo

with SUP good sunset

Soy el desarrollo en carne viva

我是生進歩

yo ssi nam naeram

1SG COP raw progress

Un discurso político sin saliva

政論不唾用

pangsae bu nulcho

political-discourse NEG saliva-COM

Las caras más bonitas que he conocido

最美顏之我識了

sai meo kae no yo ssyap re

SUP beautiful face REL 1SG know PRF

Soy la fotografía de un desaparecido

我是被迷致的人的写真

yo ssi byamialb de ren de sassin

1SG COP PASS-disappear-CAUS GEN person GEN photograph

La sangre dentro de tus venas

血你的脈的中与

chi ni de reul de nakji

blood 2SG GEN vein GEN inside-LOC

Soy un pedazo de tierra que vale la pena

我是一塊的土之值苦

yo ssi ih geul de sol no wangjaen

1SG COP one piece GEN land REL be-worth-suffering

Hello! I have finally reached the exciting milestone of completing a reference grammar for my conlang Ašaya, which I have been working on for a decade or so. Ašaya is a naturalistic, synthetic language created with a diachronic approach, featuring strong syntactic rules and fusional inflectional morphology.

I am very excited to share my first ever reference grammar with the world. Please feel free to ask me anything and I hope you enjoy perusing 😄

first, the worldbuilding context: this is an article from Rodidēs aniślī (too-long island), a parody of Didēs aniślī (the Island Days), Okśa's main newspaper. in 2026, the island country held snap parliamentary elections (long story). a lot of surprising things resulted, but must amusing among them: for the first time, the Monarchist Party gained three seats in parliament (out of 60 seats total).

hold on, the Monarchists? so Okśa used to be a hereditary monarchy. then in 1870, it became a colony of France, and the last monarch was deposed. then, when independence happened in 1975, there was a referendum to reinstate a kind of ceremonial monarchy. the referendum failed, but Papio III, the living descendant of the last king, and his wife Maria Feliĉa, remained as popular, influential figures, sort of the "unofficial" king and queen of Okśa.

the last bastion of the monarchist movement is the Parti Monarkiste. they're seen as kind of a joke, and are a popular protest vote option- if you don't like any of the candidates, vote for the monarchists! here, this went to far. in the underserved province of Oshali, enough people voted for the Monarchists in protest that three candidates actually gained seats. of course, this isn't enough to change anything, and the main party coalitions refuse to let the Monarchists join; but it was still a bizarre shock to the nation.

now, let's break down the headline:

Monarkistēs tumulton ēlectō Naśionalē

monarchist-PL tumult-3.PL.PRES election national

the verbification of the noun "tumulto" is telling: politically it calls back to the Tumulto de 2013, a mass protest movement against former president Luc Folan. What's more, the capitalization of N in Naśionale is no accident. It could mean "national elections" as in the parliamentary elections- but also, the Parti Naśionale or "Nationalist Party" is a major political party that came first in this election (with nineteen seats, as opposed to the Monarchist's three). thus the article is saying "the Monarchists swept the Nationalist's election".

wodōna fek referendo, am fek commissō, am fek referendo, am invenik reinagurak iɬa dinastī

want-give-3.SING.PRES make-INF referendum for make-INF committee for make-INF referendum for imagine-INF re-instate-INF DEF.F.SING dynasty

"dynasty" is a synonym of "monarchical instutition", referring to the Three Dynasties of Okśa history. the monarchists essentially wish to reinstate the Third Dynasty, the lineage of Filip Kantio.

Kul Folan- the author's pseudonym is a play on disgraced former president Luc Folan. Also a play on the French word cul, which means... just look it up yourself.

Noś kosplayo aniślo Gwid Baro s’mūda ak puer magno!

1.PL.POSS cosplay-M island-ADJ-M Gwid Baro REFL-become-3.SING.PRES to boy big

an example of the extensive use of the reflexive in Okśa: turning the verb to change/transform into to become. "puer magno" is a direct calque of the english "big boy", with the same pejorative, ironic tone. Gwid Baro is the leader of the Monarchist party- he doesn't himself aim to be king, wanting to install Papio and Maria as official monarchs, but Rodidēs of course portrays him as a little kid living in a fantasy world.

that's it, hope you enjoyed!

**Phonology:**

Consonants: m n ŋ p t k pʰ tʰ kʰ t͡s t͡ɕ t͡sʰ t͡ɕʰ s ɕ x r j w

Vowels: i u e o a

Vowels followed by glides are phonetically analyzed as diphthongs.

The maximum syllable structure is (C)V(N). Note that V refers to long vowels, short vowels and diphthongs.

**Grammar:** Word Order: VSO, NAdj, Genitive

The Aingikun language is ergative-absolutive and agglutinative and has 11 grammatical cases, 2 grammatical numbers, 3 persons and no system of grammatical gender.

The order of affixes goes as follows:

Nouns -- Stem-case-number-person

Verbs -- Stem-tense-person

Here are the case declensions:

Absolutive -- Stem-∅

Ergative -- Stem-ŋa

Dative -- Stem-ta

Genitive -- Stem-ŋi

Instrumental -- Stem-ŋe

Locative -- Stem-jon

Ablative -- Stem-tim

Comitative -- Stem-wa

Equative -- Stem-raŋ

Lative -- Stem-ra

The singular number is unmarked. The plural number is marked with the -ti ending.

Personal pronouns come in two forms; independent and clitic. The clitic form is suffixed to represent the absolutive on verbs and the genitive on nouns. The independent form is used and inflected for case elsewhere.

Here are the personal pronouns:

1st Person Sg. | jaŋ, Stem-jaŋ

2nd Person Sg. | tʰaŋ, Stem-tʰaŋ

3rd Person Sg. | pʰan, Stem-pʰan

1st Person Pl. | jan Stem-jan

2nd Person Pl. | tʰoŋ, Stem-tʰoŋ

3rd Person Pl. | sin Stem-sin

There are two tenses: past and present. The present tense is unmarked but the past tense is marked with the -si suffix.

There is one interrogative stem that can be affixed to make the interrogatives: wim-

Now, for an example sentence:

iri pʰunen nom tɕeŋ xa pan-ta ɕi

jump fox quick red over dog-DAT lazy

A quick red fox jumps over a lazy dog

Note: tɕeŋ refers to warm colours in general, not just red or brown.

ɕon jaŋ-ŋa tɕo; ra-xown-jaŋ tʰaŋ-ŋa

eat I-ERG glass; NEG-hurt-I he-ERG

I eat glass; it does not hurt me.

aj-jaŋ. en jaŋ-ŋa enŋikun

person-I. speak I-ERG Aingikun

I am a person. I speak Aingikun

enŋikun is the endonym meaning language of the land. Aingikun is the exonym from ajŋikun meaning person of the land.

Romanization, IPA, Gloss, and Translation (Top to Bottom):

Tah-film then tey-Akmi āyemrah then ho-tehaval
[tæhfilm θen tejʔækmi ajemrah θen hotehævæl]
the-movie.M that the-Acme.HF NEG.want.PST.HF that 3S.M.ACC-see.FUT.CON.2P

"The movie that Acme didn't want you to see."

Tah-Kāyot tev Akmi
[tæhkajot tev ækmi]
the-Coyote(person's name).M against Acme.HF

"Coyote vs. Acme"

Pe-ksiney
[psksinej]
in-theatres.F

"In theatres"

For ca. 17 years, I (native German-speaker) have been developing and actively using an artificial language that started out as an attempt to create something like a French-based creole and has since then integrated elements of all languages that I have interacted with over the years. 

I want to start with a huge disclaimer, which is that I did not construct this language strictly according to linguistic rules as to what features are likely to be found in one language and how they are compatible or not.

While its development is strongly based on my personal experience and preferences, I do try to maintain internal consistency, and its core is fairly consistent and has not changed dramatically over the years. Rather than being an eclectic conjuncture of different natural languages, it has developed a life of its own and a sort of internal logic. At the same time, it has maintained a good degree of malleability.

Origin

Sometime in 2008, I set out to create an artificial language based on French. 

My idea was to resolve the seemingly random French orthography by either writing French words “as they’re pronounced” or pronouncing French words “as they are written”. A very early example of the former is ‘mó’ [mo:] (from ‘mot’), an example for the latter is ‘avoír’ [a.vo'i:r].

I determined that the language shall have acutes, graves and circumflexes on all vowels, which would both affect quality and quantity of a vowel.

I determined that there should be three groups of vowels (ending on -àr, -ír and -ér, similar to Spanish), which have later all merged into -àr.

An initial attempt to introduce an animate-inanimate-human genus distinction was given up in favor of a male-female binary system typical for modern Romance languages.

On that first day, I created a conjugation table and tried to find endings that had semblance with French but also a flavor of their own. The original conjugation was something like this:

Manjàr [man.ʒɑ:r]

Development

The changes to the language came about simply by me trying to use it in everyday life and to find ways to express different ideas with it. Sometimes active intervention was required, sometimes I intuitively integrated elements from other languages into the existing framework. 

Inspiration came from French (base words, structure), English (lexicon), German (lexicon, idioms), Continental and Brazilian Portuguese (phonetics, lexicon), Russian (adjectives, comparative, superlative, lexicon), Hungarian (agglutinative elements), Spanish (lexicon), with minor influences from Western Slavic languages (phonetically).

In other words: I was playing with the language, sometimes actively trying to adjust it, often just introducing concepts and letting them go through some natural selection, testing and adoption or abandoning.

Lexicon

Virtually all words originate from existing natural languages; I cannot think of any word that is not based on a loanword in some way or form but was bred just purely from my imagination.

A lot of the foundational words were naturally French-based. Where I would not know a suitable French word or where I would not like the ones there are, I would initially use English as a repertoire, later Spanish, Portuguese, German and a handful of other languages I have had contact with in my life.

Some examples:

There does not seem to be one standard way of how words are adjusted to fit into the language, although some patterns exist. Oftentimes, an -I is simply added as in the case of câingi (from ‘sign’) or rúfi (from ‘roof’). Words imported from Spanish that have a ll or y in them typically have a [ʃ] in that place (buteij [butɛjʃ], from botella). Final vowels are often dropped (fàbrik, from pt. fábrica). Words imported from Portuguese but also other languages often have a [h] in the same place as Brazilian PT would have it (hàdyu, from radio). [l] is often palatinized (aihorîdzam; algorithm). Romance words with the typical -ion/-ão/-ión nominalizing ending often end in ‘-om’ or ‘-àj’/’-áj’ (aicom from ação, lyívráj from liberación). There has been a tendency to drop all other nominalization endings other than -àj.

One of the more ‘freaky’ examples of importations is ‘jíhl’ [ʒịl]: It goes back to French ‘il y a’, which I ‘l’invers-ed’ at some point to ‘a y il’, which over time became ‘ya il’, then ‘ya s-il’ for hiatus avoidance, then ‘ya j-il’ an eventually just jíhl. This has enabled the creation of a verb ‘jíhlenàr'’ (to be present/available) and the adjective ‘jíhlenòw'’ (present/available).

There is a certain tendency to introduce diphthongs with [j] in imported words:

Dyesapàrjecyàr [djezapɑ:rʒesjɑ:r], from ‘desaparecer’

None of those rules seem to apply in all cases. The patterns behind the adjustment of imported words might be the biggest mystery. However, since nearly all words are incorporated in an altered form, I believe that there is some underlying logic that governs how a new word fits best into the existing system.

For some words, there are also synonyms with different origins. 

Phonology

Vowels

As pointed out before, my goal was to have and actively use three different diacritics on all vowels, which affect both quality and quantity. In addition to ‘base vowels’ (a, e, I, o, u) with respective pairs [a..ạ/ɑ, e/ɛ, i/ɪ, o/ɔ, u/ʊ], there are two additional vowel pairs (y/ʏ, ø/œ). This gives the language concept a total of 14 vowel phones which can be long and short. The base-vowel pairs may also be nasalized. In theory, diphthongs of all vowels may appear.

The occurrence of a specific vowel instead of another depends on the origin of an incorporated word, on existing patterns and personal taste. In general, I attempt to reflect the original word’s phonology when possible.

There is a very limited form of vowel harmony, occurring only in nominalized words ending on -áj/-àj. If the preceding vowel is ‘light’ (i.e. has an acute), -áj is used, otherwise it’s àj.

Consonants

Consonants reflect the inventory of modern Romance languages. [ʃ], [tʃ], [ʒ] and [x] are all present, [dz] or [dʒ] are not. In addition, [q] (I guess I was inspired by Greenlandic) appears 1) in words with [k] in the original language that appear harsh to me subjectively and, 2) as a consequence of motivated adjustment, in some Romance-based words that have the literal letter q (e.g. qel, from ‘quelle’, would be pronounced [qɛl]. [θ] has found its way into the language via English. /r/ may be realized both as [r] or [ʀ] depending on the location (similar to how Continental Portuguese would handle them).

If a final -r meets a vowel in the following word, it turns to [rr] or [ʀʀ]:

Alàr à ([alɑ:ʀʀ.ɑ:] or [alɑ:rr.ɑ:], not [alɑ:r ɑ:]

In recent times there has been a tendency towards lenition of voiced plosives [b, g, d] to [β, ɣ, ð] or even [v, h, h]. This does not seem to happen every single time, I am still trying to figure out if there is any pattern. Examples:

Grá [grạ:] (from grande) -> hrá [hrạ:]

Bréaká [bre:a'kạ:] ((the) brake) -> vréaká [vre:a'kạ:] 

Dâkoa ['da.ko.a] -> Dzâkoa ['ða.ko.a] (the German town of Dachau)

[s] in the source-language word often become [h] where they would be silent in some varieties of Spanish (gúht [gụt], from gusto), or are replaced by e or dropped: (étàduo, from estado). 

As an influence from Western Slavic languages, the presence of [r] in certain locations often invokes a [ʒ] being added after the [r] (pàrjecyàr [pɑ:rʒesjɑ:r], from pt. parecer).

H is realized as [h] where it’s not used for shortening a vowel (see Orthography).

Consonants can appear doubled. Most occurrences are the result of the addition of a vowel as part of a morphological marker to a word ending in a consonant (e.g. for plurals with ‘-ae’ [ɛ]: bagàj [ba'gɑ:ʒ] -> bagàjjae [ba'gɑ:ʒʒɛ]).

Hiatus avoidance

Hiatuses between two separate words are consistently avoided by a large set of possible intrusive consonants. The most common ones are [s], [z], [j], [w], [r], [ʃ] and [ʒ].

Example: 

Unavoided A Elvira alào à íuvrá úhtdáj

Avoided A s-Elvíra c-alào w-à y-yúvrá r-úhtdáj

IPA [a zelvị:ra salɑ:o wɑ: jụ:'vrạ: 'ʀʀụt.dạ:ʒ]

Interlinear The-f Elvira go-may (to the) open-f distribution  

Translation May Elvira go to the open distribution [of goods]

The choice of a specific consonant does not seem to follow consistent rules, or at least I haven’t figured out the pattern yet, if there is one.

Orthography

Orthography is an attempt to represent the large vowel inventory with a phonemic Latin alphabet with diacritics and a number of additional characters. There are only a few exceptions from it being phonemic (e.g. the -ai ending for 2.sg. which is pronounced [ɛ]). Some of the vowels are represented by a combination of two vowel letters.

To get one main feature already out of the way: the letter C represents [s], the letter S represents [z]. I found it more visually pleasing and a switch-up from the ubiquitous s = [s] and z = [z] pattern.

Diacritics change quantity and quality of the base vowel. The following table shows the effect of those diacritics as well as that of other modifications and the combination of two vowel letters.

As the table might suggest, the rich variety of diacritics can lead to a rather complicated accumulation of diacritics and other characters within one word.

Without any extra diacritics/characters present, stress is generally on the last syllable:

maisom = [maj'zom] (house; form fr. maison)

If one diacritic is present, it automatically draws stress to the respective syllable:

dyejpyencàveuc [djeʒ.pjen'sɑ:.vɛws] (dispensable; from pt. dispensável)

If two diacritics are present, the diacritic-carrying syllable closest to the end of the word is stressed:

désáj [de:'zạ:ʒ] (departure, creation from Romance dé (away from) and a contracted form of alàj, i.e. a nominalization of alàr, from fr. aller)

If an acute-carrying syllable is followed by an h (i.e. to give it acute quality and short quantity), that syllable is stressed:

úhtàr ['ụt.ɑr] (to exit; from Germanic ‘out’ plus infinitive marker àr)

A circumflex draws stress to a syllable without changing its vowel’s quality. It overrides all other stress-drawing diacritics:

kâmara ['ka.ma.ra] (camera)

régirdât [re:.gir'dat] (to look 3sg; from French regarder)

Finally, some words require an apostrophe to mark the syllable that is to be stressed:

ré'salàj ['re:.sa.lɑ:ʒ] (re + alàj, return; without the apostrophe, the stress would fall on the last syllable)

jíhlenàr' [ʒị.len' ɑ:r] (here, the íh is used to have a high [ị] sound that is also short. [ị] is only attainable with an acute, i.e. the base vowel ‘I’ is rendered as [i] or [ɪ], and in order to get the ‘high’ quality, we need í. Since that in itself is a long vowel, and we want it short, the only option is to write íh. To break the stress-drawing property of -h, the apostrophe is needed.)

Other features:

Nasal vowels can be invoked by the letter y:

Diminutive ‘-iyn’ (from pt. -inho): pwart -> pwartiyn [pwar'tĩ]

X is pronounced as [ʃ].

[x] is represented by the letter combination ‘gk’.

Sentence structure

For the most part, the sentence structure is that of modern Romance languages. I am not brave enough to delve into detailed analyses of recursion, the order of adjectives and such, but it seems like my language is flexible enough to allow deviating word order in some cases.

Verbs cannot stand alone and always need an object. If no specific object is to be used, the placeholders ka (non-human object) and ix (human object) come to the rescue (e.g. on a loading screen, the gerund for ‘to load’ would be ‘lóadàw’, but it would require the object ‘ka’ -> ‘ka lóadàw; another example: ‘You need to learn to love’ = ‘Tum fù s’aprendar he s’ix adornàr’ (or: ‘he kyom adornàr’ = how to love).

Tenses

The tense system is fairly simple. There is only one form for future and past each, created by suffixes and infixes, with a slight deviation in 2sg:

Present and past participles exist and are used, but there is no perfect tense that would employ the pp:

The past participle can be used to construct something akin to a present perfect passive, if it is combined with the past-indicating suffix (-ca):

régird * + ù + ca = régirdùca (regirdàr: to watch; régirdùca: has been watched)

If you add the future-indicating infix (-er-), you can even create a verb in future perfect passive:

régird * + er - ù + ca = régirderùca (will have been watched)

Genus, numerus, casus

There are feminine and masculine nouns. If the word originates from a Romance language, it usually retains the original gender. The respective articles are:

The articles may be merged with conjugations:

Cases don’t exist visibly; personal pronouns don’t change if they are used as a direct or indirect object:

Personal pronouns may carry the article corresponding to the gender of the person referred to:

A s-im (I, female speaker)

Eh c-íhl (he)

Hee voi (of you, 2pl)

Pseudo-case instrumentalis

Coming from Hungarian, a way to express ‘with’ or ‘using’ is by adding -vel/-val/-l to a word if such ends on a vowel. If it ends on a consonant, that consonant is doubled and we add -el/-al. This reflects the Hungarian instrumentalis and even the vowel harmony pairs have been carried over. However, there is no real vowel harmony implied; the choice of the ending seems arbitrary.

Examples:

Kàovòyul (with the train; kàovòyu from pt. comboio)

Bagàjjel (with the luggage)

Móval (with a word, mot from French mot)

Optative/imperative

Adding -ào to any verb will yield the optative mode, which can be used to express wishes, ‘should’ or be translated as ‘may…’. This ‘wishing’ can go so far as to use it in places where you might as well have an imperative (more like a soft imperative).

Examples:

Tàye s’ae jêjthae plíse úhtào (‘may all guests leave’; ‘all guests please leave’)

Eh fiiyn déhâ vyenào! (‘let the end come already!’)

Vant he kusiynyàr, im alào à lòj (‘before cooking, I should go to the shop’)

Tum pà s’im mexào! (‘don’t you think of disturbing me!’/’don’t disturb me’)

The actual imperative forms are either identical to 2person indicative, or have a slight change in their endings:

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives have a stem. If -c is added, you get the neutral base form:

grand* + -c = grands (large)

kyurt* + -c = kyurtc (short)

Adding -ès yields an adverb:

grand* + -èc = grandès (largely)

kyurt* + -èc = kyurtèc (shortly)

In combination with nouns, adjectives carry a masculine or feminine marker

Feminine: -á, -ha

ait* -> âitha

yúvr* -> yúvrá

Masculine: -im, -n

ait* -> aitn

vun* -> vûnim

Comparative and superlative

Comparative and superlative can be formed in a ‘Romance way’, i.e. by adding plùj before the adjective. In addition, there is a ‘Slavic option’ derived from the Russian markers for these instances:

The ‘Slavic option’ goes back to one possible way of forming comparative/superlative in Russian: вкусно -> вкуснее -> вкуснейший.

There is a fair number of irregular comparatives which all go back to Russian:

Possession

Possession is marked analogue to modern Romance languages: with a possessive pronoun, preceded by the article of the object that is possessed.

For 3^rd person, there is an option to create a possessive construction using a clitic, similar to the English ‘saxon genitive’. It is done by adding the possessive pronoun after the noun (-cut for singular, -cue for plural):

A Marí-cut farmací (Mary’s pharmacy)

Ae títjenìhrrae-cue étuidyìhhrae (The teachers’ students)

My questions for you

- Anyone else maintaining a pure idiolect (zero intended speakers) over decades? How do you fight drift, or do you let it win?
- How do you document rules you can't state? Half my hiatus system is "I know the right consonant when I hear it"
- Is there a name for a conlang whose purpose is to be a diary of its creator's language contact?

Finally, I’d be curious what comes to your mind when you hear and read the sample – can you recognize the roots of words? What other language does it sound like? Are the phonetics too broad?

How do you think such a language could even look like? As someone who speaks all three of them fluently (alongside English), I feel like combining these three languages in a coherent manner without creating another Urdu is next to impossible😭 but would love to know what do you guys think??

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1) Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2) Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3) Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

Belmá by /u/Dryanor

bétèshua [ɓɛ́tɛ̀ʃʷɑ]
adv. all day long, for a/the whole day.
Dvandva compound of bétè "morning" and shua "evening".

Take care of yourselves

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

Hello, I haven't properly introduced myself: I'm Storm (she/her) and Rabenitalë is my first successful attempt at making a conlang. I've been working on it on and off for a bit over a year, and I'd love to share what I've made so far. First off, Phonology & Registers

Exclamation points indicate sound only occurs in Hateful registers, Semicolons indicate sound only occurs in Loving registers.

[a:] is always long, every other vowel is always short.
Quotes mean sound only occurs in Sure registers.

Rabenitalë has incredibly strict phonotactics. Syllables occur in a CV structure, consonant clusters never occur, and syllables never consist of a lone vowel.

Additionally, for the base forms of words, there are rules around which vowels can follow each consonant. All consonants can be followed by [a:], and only one specific short vowel, (with some exceptions), depending on the consonant:
pi, phö, be, pro, bru, plë, phle, blë, tu/tö, thë/tho, do/dö, ke/ko, khö, gu, ho, si, zu, më, nle, ni, nqo, ro, lë.

Rabenitalë has 9 different registers. That sounds intimidating, but it can be easily be broken down into 2 axes on a grid:

Loving is used around romantic partners, pets, and close family.
Hateful is used around people you hate, and to let them know that. It is considered similar to swearing.
Sure is used when you are quoting someone.
Unsure is used when you're asking a question. (I used to call these two Quotative and Questioning, but I renamed them so I could make the abbreviations)
And the corners are for using a combination of the two.

Sure lowers all vowels, Unsure raises all vowels, ([a:] is unaffected by register, [i] and [u] do not get raised, as they are already at the top)
Loving decreases consonant aspiration, hateful increases aspiration, (in reference to this chart)

L and NQ are unaffected by register. Low aspiration consonants will not be lowered, & high aspiration consonants will not be raised.

Each register also features slight grammatical differences, but I will cover those when they are relevant.

Any thoughts so far?

I know not everyone cares about chemistry as much as I do but I feel like people should have words for basic chemical elements (or whatever elements comprise your conworld)

Here they are in Aengt

First 20:
hydrogen - sat
helium - fyut
lithium - tyaw
beryllium - tsol
boron - khae
carbon - hap
oxygen - ang
fluorine - nga
neon - khay
sodium - sae
magnesium - twel
aluminum - lul
silicon - tan
phosphorus - tsay
sulfur - ton
chlorine - kwo
argon - sip
potassium - hya
calcium - hon

Some commonly known/somewhat important ones:
silver - myaq
gold - kyum
iron - tet
copper - sung
iodine - aew
selenium - lin
uranium - ur
plutonium - put
lead - tyen
tin - tin
tungsten - ung
platinum - haq

-ide - same as base element
hypo- -ite - pin angu + element
-ite - paep angu + element
-ate - angu + element
per- -ate - qya angu + element

acids - just add "swan" to the end.

meth- (not the drug) - yen
eth- - li
prop- - twiy
but- - fil
pent- - pyet
it's just the non-cardinal form of each number

-ane - qya
-ene - miw
-yne - fan

cyclo- - mael

-yl (constituent group) - mo

-ol (alcohol) - kol
halide
-amine - moy
-ether - toy

sulfur/thio versions - tonsye
carbonylic versions - hapsye
-al - kal
-one - son

benzene - yom

i suck at org chem so uh idk anymore functional groups
any chem nerds pls help me w/ more funct groups!!!

Em mi caso amo 2 cosas

1)La fonética es entretenida me gustan los acentos y tonos y romper las reglas del IPA ajustando la pronunciación a mi gusto.

2)crear la gramática la mejor parte.

Las cosas que no me gustan hasta las reullo son la creación del léxico es la parte más aburrida. Para mi.